You'd better get ready to use your loaf if you want to get your hands on some bread.

Over the next three months a cluster of East London ATMs will be offering customers the chance to withdraw cash using written prompts in Cockney rhyming slang, the area's colorful and often impenetrable dialect.

ATMs run by a company called Bank Machine offer a language option allowing customers to enter their "Huckleberry Finn" instead of their PIN, and rather worryingly informs them that the machine is reading their "bladder of lard" at a prompt about examining their card.

The origins of Cockney rhyming slang are obscure. It is thought to have been used by market traders who needed a way of communicating without tipping off their customers.

It works by replacing a word with a short rhyming phrase. For example: "Money" becomes "bread and honey," which in turn is shortened to "bread." Similarly, "head" becomes "loaf of bread," and then just simply "loaf."

Speedo-wearing suspect not speedy enough

A burglary suspect wearing only a Speedo-style swimsuit has been arrested in Connecticut after a police dog tracked him down and bit him on the leg.

Police say they spotted the suspect in East Hartford on Aug. 20 wearing the bathing suit and holding a toolbox that had been stolen from a truck. They say he tried to steal several vehicles and also took items from them.

Police say he tried


Advertisement

to run from them, but a police dog found him hiding behind a car.

The Journal Inquirer of Manchester reported that he was being held after his arrest on $50,000 bail. He was scheduled for arraignment Aug. 21, but the result of that hearing was not immediately available.

Speeding driver claims he's CIA, has immunity

Police in northeast Tennessee say Scott Gibson isn't the deputy director of the CIA - and he'd have to pay his $75 speeding fine even if he were.

On June 29, a Mount Carmel speed camera clocked the 56-year-old Rogersville resident going 66 mph in a 55 mph zone. He was sent a ticket.

Assistant Police Chief Mike Campbell says Gibson mailed back a copy of the citation with a handwritten note, claiming he wasn't subject to local speed zones because he was the deputy chief of the CIA.

The federal agency told police Gibson never had been an employee.

Gibson was arrested for criminal impersonation and released on $500 bond. Campbell says federal charges are also pending.

- From Associated Press